College Football Potpourri

As you munch on Thanksgiving leftovers and figure out who's been naughty and who's been nice (if you've actually gone Christmas shopping), here's a little grab-bag of dopeyness related to college football for this Saturday:

First off, we have a story from Tim Prister in this morning's Indianapolis Star:

Weis in trouble if tonight is a blowout

The headline is misleading, since it's written to make you think that if the result of the Notre Dame/USC game is the determining factor as to whether or not Weis is fired. Instead, the article talks about how Notre Dame might be regretting signing Weis to a long contract extension. Pretty harmless, but then this:

One media outlet reported that Weis would be fired upon the conclusion of the USC game, which would drop the Irish to 6-6 with losses in five of their past seven games. (emphasis mine)

I love how the author just assumes that Notre Dame will lose the game. True, the Irish were something like 31 point underdogs to USC, but a newspaper should at least acknowledge the possibility of Notre Dame pulling off an upset tonight.

(EDIT: Notre Dame lost 38-3. The score is misleading; the game wasn't even that close.)

On to part deux: Georgia/Georgia Tech in the early afternoon game on CBS. Craig Bolerjack and Trev Alberts doing play-by-play and color, respectively.

Besides generally hacky play-by-play, Bolerjack also called a two-point conversion by Georgia Tech's Jonathan Dwyer a touchdown. After that score tied the game at 28-28 in the 3rd quarter, Georgia Tech recovered a fumble on the ensuing kickoff and scored another touchdown three plays later to make it 34-28. When Georgia Tech lined up for the extra point, Bolerjack questioned why Georgia Tech wasn't going for two again. With 6:30 left in the 3rd quarter. Up six. With a healthy placekicker.

Okay, a little nitpicky, I know. Eat your leftover turkey.

EDIT: But wait, there's more:

After USC smacked Notre Dame around like a grumpy nun using a ruler on a really bad Catholic-school kid, ESPN's Holly Rowe was interviewing a couple of USC defensive players on the field. She asked how it felt for one player to be on the field with his teammate for "the last time." Of course, USC will be going to a bowl game (most likely the Rose Bowl), but even if she meant the regular season, USC plays UCLA next week. So I think Rey Maualuga (the player she was interviewing) will be able to line up with his defensive teammates at least one, if not two, more times.

Finally, more BCS shemoligan!

In case you don't know the whole mess that is the Big 12 conference right now. Since Oklahoma won tonight over Oklahoma State, there is a 3-way tie in the Big 12 South between Oklahoma, Texas, and Texas Tech. All 3 have beaten each other: Texas beat Oklahoma, Texas Tech beat Texas, and Oklahoma beat Texas Tech. There is no clear tiebreaker (at least, not head to head), so Big 12 rules state that the team that is highest in the BCS standings will go to the Big 12 Championship game. All 3 teams are 11-1, and heading into this week Texas was #2 in the BCS with a slim lead over Oklahoma. Texas Tech came in at #6, so it's unlikely (okay, impossible) Texas Tech would go to the Big 12 championship. Oklahoma was ahead of Texas in the polls, but behind the Longhorns in the computer rankings. Since Oklahoma beat a ranked team tonight, the Sooners will probably get a boost in the computer rankings, but how poll voters react is anyone's guess.

(As I've mentioned before, I'm not a big fan of the polls. To me, the only way to objectively figure out the best team out of three 11-1 teams who have beaten each other is to use the computer rankings and nothing else.)

I'm sure you're thinking "that's pretty clear." If by clear you mean "absolute clusterfuck," you'd be right! I think what we can all agree on is that you can make a case for each team (Texas, Oklahoma, and Texas Tech) to be the Big 12 South representative in next week's championship game.

However, ESPN SportsCenter's Neil Everett believes that Oklahoma is already #2 in the rankings. As he was doing highlights, Everett constantly referred to how Oklahoma is going to the Big 12 Championship game, including concluding the recap with "Oklahoma punches its ticket to the championship game." A little premature, yes? Even if Everett is right, there's no way he can assume that until the BCS standings are released Sunday. And, he has no business injecting his opinion in the highlights!

Also, Oklahoma scored a touchdown with :30 seconds left to make the final score 61-41. Oklahoma did not pass at all on its final drive--the Sooners took over in Oklahoma State territory after a fumble, so it's not like the Sooners were throwing passes and running a hurry-up offense frantically trying to score again. But the final play came on first down with Oklahoma State only having one time out. Oklahoma could have taken a knee and ended the game, so why run a play at all? I'd say the Sooners were running up the score a little bit, since they need the poll voters to get them to #2 in the BCS.

Of course, Neil Everett disagrees, saying during SportsCenter of the Sooners' final play: "you can't take a knee there." Really? Why not? Why do NFL teams do it? Neil, are we rooting for Oklahoma? Yes, Everett made the case on SportsCenter that it's not Oklahoma's fault Oklahoma State couldn't tackle, but again, no play was necessary.

It's somewhat understandable if Oklahoma was running up the score--as I mentioned, the Sooners need poll voters to be impressed with them. But Everett and others should not defend it by saying there was nothing else the Sooners could do.

Here is a memo to everyone involved in discussing or covering college football: there are no such things as "style points." Quit using that stupid, tired cliche to describe how teams need to win by large margins in order to impress poll voters.

No matter who ends up being #2 in the BCS, there is one thing we can count on as a result: lots of whining.

As God As My Witness, I Thought Turkeys Could Fly

Okay, this post has nothing to do with sports, but I was annoyed enough I needed to say something and hell, we haven't posted much lately, so here it goes.

MSNBC.com had a story on the Top 5 Thanksgiving TV episodes. Their Top 5 consisted of:

“Friends” (“The One Where Ross Got High”)
“Gilmore Girls” (“A Deep-Fried Korean Thanksgiving”)
“The West Wing” (“Shibboleth”)
“Northern Exposure” (“Thanksgiving”)
“South Park” (“Starvin’ Marvin”)

While I have not seen all of the episodes listed above, there is one egregious omission on this list that I cannot abide. How in the hell can you not include the best Thanksgiving episode on TV EVER?!?

The "Turkey's Away" episode of WKRP to me has to be the funniest Thanksgiving TV moment in history! When Mr. Carlson starts dropping live turkeys from a helicopter and Les is on the ground giving a blow-by-blow description has me howling every time. Les' comment on the crowd as being, "curious, yet well-behaved," has been a staple quote amongst our group for years. And we cannot forget, "Thanks for that on-the-spot report, Les, and for those of you who just tuned in, the Pinedale Shopping Mall has just been bombed with live turkeys. Film at eleven."

As we see nearly every time there is a "Best of" list, they typically are heavily biased towards those people/events/things that are more recent. If you ask a typical baseball fan to give you their Top 10 players all-time, most of that list would include recent players. It is the same way with the Top 5 list above. The oldest episode is from 1992 (Northern Exposure) and two are from this decade. Hell, I had graduated high school by 1992. I imagine the person writing this column was born after this infamous WKRP episode even aired (October 1978).

Obviously, I am not alone in this thought. At the bottom of the story, readers can select the Thanksgiving episode they like best from a list of 20 TV episodes. The current leader at the time I wrote this was? You guessed it, "Turkeys Away" with 32% of the vote. A long distance second was the Friends episode at 11%. Way to go MSNBC! Fucktards!

Some from me and all of us here at LomHenn.com, have a Happy Thanksgiving holiday, don't freeze your asses off if you go out early on Black Friday and remember:

TURKEYS CANNOT FLY!

For your viewing pleasure, check out the full episode here.

Let's All Pile On Bob Kravitz And the BCS

Howdy. Two posts in two days--still too early to call it a streak, but a good trend nevertheless.

Zinglebert beat me to the punch with the Bob Kravitz college football playoff article, but I thought I'd add my two cents (Yes, I could have done this in the comments section, but this will probably be too long and I needed something to post. So there.).

I agree wholeheartedly with Zinglebert's notion that Kravitz has the right conclusion but idiotic reasoning. I actually agree with Kravitz on this issue: I'd rather not see a playoff in college football, either.

God, I feel dirty admitting that I agree with Kravitz. And it gets worse: I agree with his general idea that playoff systems can (and often do) devalue the regular season. Of course the regular season still matters--you have to play well in the regular season to first make the playoffs--but once the playoffs start, the regular season doesn't matter at all. Oh, sure, it matters for playoff seeding, but how much has seeding mattered in deciding the championship? Using the last year as an example, only the NBA had the best two teams in the regular season meet for the championship:

NHL Stanley Cup Finals: Detroit (#1 seed in West) over Pittsburgh (#2 seed in East)
NBA Finals: Boston (#1) over LA Lakers (#1)
Super Bowl (NFL): NY Giants (#5) over New England (#1)
World Series (MLB): Philadelphia (#2) over Tampa Bay (#2)

Looking at larger trends: in MLB, the overall best record in the league hasn't won the World Series since 1998, and only 4 times in the last 10 years has a #1 seed made it to the World Series (they are 2-2 once they get there). In the NFL, the last time the best team in the regular season won the Super Bowl was 2003 (New England). A #1-seed has made the Super Bowl every year since, but has lost.

The playoffs are the ultimate "small sample size" argument: any team can beat another team on a given day. Yes, the New York Giants beat the Patriots in the Super Bowl, so they were the better team that day. However, a reasonable person would not say that the Giants were a better team than the Patriots last season--in fact, the Patriots beat the Giants 5 weeks earlier. By the time the Patriots and Giants met for the rematch on February 3rd, the regular season meant squat.

Zinglebert makes a valid point that in the regular season, good teams don't always play the other good teams. And that sometimes makes it hard to determine who the "better" team is--unless both teams play identical schedules (and they never do), then a head-to-head matchup helps decide a championship.

Back to Kravitz. Zinglebert already dissected the article, but some parts are worth repeating:

Every week, every game involving a Top 25 team is, in its own way, a playoff game. It's not necessarily a one-and-done, but it serves essentially the same purpose.

One of the reasons college football's popularity has soared in recent years is because every regular-season game matters and matters deeply. When USC loses early in the season at Oregon State, it's tantamount to a first-round playoff loss. When Texas Tech knocks off Texas, it's a playoff game.

As we've noted a few times now about Kravitz, he has the uncanny ability to take the correct position but use entirely crap reasoning to get there. Every game involving a Top 25 team in college football is NOT "essentially a playoff game." It depends on when the loss is in the season--teams can recover from early losses, depending on the outcome of the rest of the season.

And I love how he uses Texas as an example of a team that was knocked "out of the playoffs" by an earlier loss to Texas Tech--thanks to the 65-21 beat down of Texas Tech by the Rodgers & Hammersteins tonight, Texas may very well end up #2 in the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) standings!

I like the fact that with one bad performance, Penn State's claim to a national title is all but dead.

So, isn't that the exact definition of a playoff: one bad performance, and you're out? Penn State's national title hopes went down not just because of their loss, but because a) they lost after USC lost and b) no one above them has lost since (until tonight). USC lost to Oregon State earlier this season, but USC still has a remote chance of playing for the national title.

It's difficult to quantify, but there is surely value in the continual "who's No. 1?'' debate in college football.

Sure, I suppose that's true in the sense that it keeps people interested. But that doesn't mean that the current system that's in place is automatically the best system.

The best thing about the BCS is that the regular season matters--Kravitz and I agree on that point. However, the BCS has one giant flaw: people. Specifically, the people who vote in the polls.
The BCS standings are made up of three components: a media poll, a coaches/former coaches poll, and the average of six computers that analyze opponents, schedule strength, etc. In other words, two-thirds of the BCS is subjective.

Why are the polls such a problem? The main reason is because the polls punish teams who lose late in the season more than the teams who lose early on. An example: Florida and USC lost the same week in late September: Florida to Mississippi 31-30; USC to Oregon State 27-21. But Penn State lost to Iowa 24-23 on November 8. Florida, USC, and Penn State each has one loss, but Penn State is #8 in the BCS, USC is #6, and Florida is #4. Why? Mainly because Penn State's loss came in November, and they won't be able to go back up in the polls unless a miracle happens and 5 or 6 teams in front of them lose.

In fact, Florida is 4th in the BCS because of being ranked 3rd in both polls. The computer rankings have Florida 5th. Texas, who has all sorts of quality wins and whose only loss came in the final seconds against Texas Tech, is somehow behind Florida in both the Harris and USA Today polls. Again, Texas lost later than Florida, so Florida has the poll advantage.

A further problem is that the system is biased towards the traditional football powers and the teams that are expected to do well going into the season. The preseason polls almost always feature the big names: Florida, Alabama, Texas, Oklahoma, USC, Michigan, Ohio State, etc. Other teams who aren't the "name brand" variety have to start lower down in the polls and work their way up. The poses two problems: the first is that a loss for these schools early on effectively ends any BCS hopes, the second is that even if one of these teams goes undefeated, it can only reach the championship game if every other team loses.

Take Utah as an example. The Utes are #7 in the Harris Poll and #8 in the USA Today poll. However, Utah's computer average is #4--meaning that 6 computer analyses think Utah is the 4th best team in the land--but they won't get a sniff at the championship game because of the polls. And, since 12-0 Utah has already finished its season, it will most likely go down because it doesn't have another game, and other teams have potentially two games remaining due to conference championships. Had Utah been given any respect at the beginning of the season, perhaps it would be #4 right now, and in a good position to sneak into the championship game if Texas and/or Florida falter. As it stands, Utah is behind six teams, so no chance.

Am I saying Utah deserves a shot at the national title? Maybe. The Utes are 12-0, after all. They played Michigan, who sucks this year, but it's not like Utah knew that when it made the schedule. But then I'm reminded that the 6 independent computers have Utah #4 (heading into today's games), so I'd say no to the national title chance. If Utah ends at #1 or #2 in the computer rankings, then I'd say yes.

Why do I put so much faith in the computer rankings? For one, the computer rankings are objective. There are no "style points" in the computer analyses; for BCS purposes, margin of victory is not factored in to the computer ratings (so Florida's 70-19 win over The Citadel today may impress pollsters, but the computers will ignore the final score). The other reason I like the computer rankings is because each computer factors in the entire season, so any loss has equal weight no matter when it occurs. Strength of schedule, opponents' strength of schedule, road wins, etc. are all factors in the rankings. In other words, the computer will try to equate Utah's 12-0 record with Florida's 11-1 record despite the teams having no common opponents. I believe this to be a more reliable method than some guy who writes for the Chokoloskee Courier-Sentinel-Examiner in Florida (note: paper may not actually exist) who is lucky to see Utah play once during the season making an "objective" analysis of who's the better team based on what he's seen on SportsCenter. Would it really be surprising who he'd pick?

The coaches' poll is no better. Coaches are busy during the season, so they don't have time to watch all of the teams they need to watch. And coaches are also known for their biases, too--most notably, voting from teams from the coach's own conference.

It's obvious that the polls are the biggest problem with the system, yet it seems no sportswriter is able to recognize that--or, if he or she does recognize it, isn't willing to say so. Could it be because the sportswriters like to feel important? I'd say that's a pretty safe bet. If the polls were removed from the BCS equation, the sportswriters would lose their influence on the outcome. If we've learned anything about sports writers and reporters over the years, it's that they've always managed to overestimate their importance.

Think about it: almost all of the talking heads who have been screaming for a playoff system to replace the BCS want the teams selected for the playoffs to be determined by the polls--the subjective part of the system. What these people forget is the BCS was instituted in part because fans were upset with the system in place before--namely, no system other than the polls!

The BCS is certainly not perfect. Perhaps a playoff system will come to major college football someday. Until then, the BCS should improve itself by dumping the polls and letting the computers do the work. Since computers don't have feelings, they won't show bias for a particular team. They also won't care about any criticism, either.

Playoffs...we don't need no stinking playoffs!

Our apologies for the lack of posts this month. Some of us have been in mourning after Slut's post below on FireJoeMorgan.com and others are still busy with their jobs. We'll now it is time to get back to posting.

How fitting is it that our first post is about our "favorite" journalist - Bob Kravitz. While everyone is entitled to his or her opinion, Bob's opinion that there should not be a college football playoff is valid. Unfortunately, his justification for it is absolutely absurd, as usual.

No playoff is fine with me

On college football and other nonsense:

I belong to a very distinct minority, a population smaller than the one that claims ownership of a Jamaal Tinsley jersey and a David Harrison bobblehead.

Or the Mike Vanderjagt fan club or Panic City. We all know you definitely do not belong to the Good Writers Association!

I don't want a college football playoff.

As mentioned, you are entitled to your opinion. And being a sports columnist, this is a good start to an article. Score one for Bobby.

Well, it's not that I don't want one in the sense I don't want the whooping cough or a third eye in the middle of my forehead, but honestly, I could do quite well to continue living without it.

Why?

Because we already have a college football playoff system in place.

Oh, really? Yes we do, but it is in the lower levels of college football. But the last time I checked we do not in the BCS.

It's called the regular season.

What?!? Hey, shit-for-brains! A regular season in not a playoff!

Every week, every game involving a Top 25 team is, in its own way, a playoff game. It's not necessarily a one-and-done, but it serves essentially the same purpose.

While games involving Top 25 teams CAN be exciting, that is not always the case. Granted, a loss during the season can end a college teams chance at the National Championship, that is not always the case. In a playoff, you ARE one and done!

One of the reasons college football's popularity has soared in recent years is because every regular-season game matters and matters deeply. When USC loses early in the season at Oregon State, it's tantamount to a first-round playoff loss. When Texas Tech knocks off Texas, it's a playoff game.

NO! NO! NO! NO! NO!

It is not a playoff game you half-witted, hack of a journalist! It is a regular season conference game that did have consequences to the loser and benefits to the winner. But both teams have to play out their seasons to see if either can reach a BCS game or even the National Championship. Also, the game was the game of the season at that point. But if Texas and Texas Tech both lost two or three games over the remainder of the season, then the game's importance suddenly fades and becomes a footnote.

Also, most teams in the Top 10 do not play each other during the season unless they are from the same conference. Penn State, Alabama, USC, Texas Tech, and Florida State do not play each other during the regular season. How can you fairly say Alabama is more worthy than Texas Tech unless they play each other in playoff game, or in current terms, a bowl game?

Everything we do in sports these days serves to devalue the regular season, which is pretty precious considering how ticket prices have continued to soar for those increasingly meaningless games. The NFL has six playoff teams from each conference. Baseball went to the wild card. In hockey and basketball, the only teams that miss the playoffs are the Washington Capitals and Los Angeles Clippers.

God, the absurdity just keeps getting better and better! (Or worse and worse depending on how you look at it.)

# of teams making the playoffs/# of teams in league

Baseball - 8 out of 30

Football - 12 out of 32

Basketball - 16 out of 30

Hockey - 16 out of 30

Say what you want about the NBA and NHL. Over half the teams make the playoffs each year. But how can you say that the Super Bowl and World Series DEVALUE the regular season! The whole point of playing the season it to see who makes it to the playoffs and then who can make it to the championship.

By Kravitz's argument, the championship should have been handed over to the New England Patriots at the end of the regular season last year. No need for the playoffs, the Pats were a perfect 16-0, hand them the Lombardi trophy.

Yet, the Pats lost in the Super Bowl. We have the playoffs to have the best teams from the regular season play each other because many times they do not get always get to play each other during the regular season.

Bowl games, other than the championship game, are essentially meaningless. Conference basketball tournaments are nothing more than raw money grabs that devalue the regular season. They provide bad to average teams with second and third chances they don't deserve.

Yes, bowl games other than BCS games are meaningless in the grand scheme. However, they are a financial reward for the teams playing in them and usually a fun trip for alumni and fans.

I will agree that conference basketball tournaments are there just for the money and for mid-major and lower level teams, the tournaments do devalue the regular season. For those conferences, unless you are a Butler or Gonzaga, your conference only gets one bid and that goes to the conference tournament champ. So you can go 15-1 in your conference, lose in the finals and get to watch the tournament from home. So that's two for Bob...and two hundred against.

I like the fact that with one bad performance, Penn State's claim to a national title is all but dead.

Unless Texas Tech, Alabama, etc. all lose a game, then Penn State could resurface.

It's difficult to quantify, but there is surely value in the continual "who's No. 1?'' debate in college football.

Yes, it provide shit-fucks like you an excuse to blab your mouth on why you think Northeast Central Kansas Polytechnical A&M should be #1 this week. However, the whole poll system is subjective and as we have seen previously, is subject to influence within conferences. The BCS works when only two teams are undefeated at the end of the year. But when three or more teams are undefeated or all have one loss, the system does not work.

There is a college football playoff system.

It's called the regular season.

There is a term for journalists like you - fucktard!

There is never going to be a perfect answer to the college football playoff. The BCS IS flawed, but better than the old system of just the AP and Coaches Polls. Even if the NCAA institutes an eight team playoff, people will still be arguing which eight teams should be in it and who got snubbed. Hell, we do that with the 64-team basketball tournament!

Slut and I continue to be amazed at the fact that Kravitz can reach the correct conclustion or have a valid point, but the way he gets there or the justification for his point is so totally wrong or off-base that it kills us.

I do not fault Bob for his opinion. But man his reasoning is so fucking far off-base that you have to wonder what the man is thinking (or not) sometimes. I think working for the newspaper and co-hosting a radio show are too much for Bob and his teeny, tiny brain to handle.

A Sad Day

It's just sad.

I'm not surprised, given the infrequency of their posts recently. But still...sad.

LomHenn.com looks and feels a lot like Fire Joe Morgan. And that's not coincidence. FJM is one of the inspirations of this blog, and imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. While we may not be as good as FJM, we're damned sincere, that's for sure.

We salute Ken T., dak, and Junior for all of their effort and their wonderful posts. Thank you for showing us that there are other dorks out there.

Good luck with everything, and I hope we see you posting again sometime.

Dude, I Thought You Said No More Journey Psyche-Outs

BEHOLD...THE POWER OF THE STEVE PERRY PSYCHE-OUT!!!

For the past three plus years, when opposing kickers would line up for a field goal attempt, high up in the upper deck of the Hoosier RCA Dome, you could hear this bunch of geeks chanting, "Steve Perry...Steve Perry...Steve Perry...You shoulda been goonnneee!" While this may sound moronic or childish to some, especially Mrs. Bembledack, there was a method to our madness. The Steve Perry psyche-out did have an effect on opposing kickers. Really! Look at the statistics below.

Colts Opposing Kickers Stats
2007: 15 made-20 attempted - 75% (League Average = 82.8%)
2006: 24-35 - 68.6% (81.4%)
2005: 19-27 -70.4% (81.0%)

As you can see, the opposing teams' kickers had a much lower average than the league average. While the Colts played in the RCA Dome, the Steve Perry psyche-out (SPPO) ruled! Not to mention it was fun and we enjoyed the odd looks we got from the other fans who did not get the reference.

But has a good thing come to an end?

It seems the SPPO mystique may get imploded with the old Dome. Since moving to the new confines of Lucas Oil Stadium, the SPPO has not had the effect of old. Opposing kickers this year are making field goals at the whopping rate of 87.5%. So now we come to the ultimate question...is it time to bury the SPPO in favor for a new psyche out?

It might not be a coincidence that Journey now has a new Filipino singer named Arnel Pineda, who started earlier this year. (Coincidence?) Arnel Pineda does not have the same ring as Steve Perry, but could the psyche-out power be linked to Journey?

Lom commented earlier tht maybe we should convert to Kevin Cronin, the lead singer of REO Speedwagon. Another possibility is Paul Rodgers, former front man for Bad Company and now the lead singer for Queen. At this point, any 80's singer might work.

So I will put it to the group - what should our new psyche-out be?

A) Stick with Steve Perry
B) Arnel Pineda
C) Kevin Cronin
D) Paul Rodgers
E) The ever-popular "Player to be named later"

If you are not part of our group, please email one of us with your choice and we'll tally the results and give it a try. We may also test out some of the choices and let you know how they work out.

Should Steve Perry go the way of the do-do, I will say there is nothing funnier than getting my two-year old daughter to say "Steve Perry" and then having the psyche-out work. Hence, Mrs. Bembledack's dislike for our chant.

Let's Finish What We Started

We've all done it before at one time or another. Working on a document and when we did not have a the exact figure we put in XXX or $$$ to note we needed to add that fact or figure in. Either because we were in a hurry or sheer stupidity we forgot to go back and put that in. For most of us, that error may have been noticed by one or two or maybe a dozen people tops, right? Well, leave it to Phil Richards of the Indianapolis Newspaper Monopoly to make that type of error where thousands of people will see your stupidity!

In the Sports section of Monday's paper an article on the Patriots-Colts game had a table showing Peyton Manning's stats versus the Patriots since 2003. Granted it is a nice table. Unfortunately, Phil the fucktard forgot to go back in and add in Peyton's stats for last night's game before it went to press. There at the top of the able next to yesterday's date are a row of X's all the way across. In the column right next to it we have all of the stats from the game, so Phil cannot say that the game ended too late and missed his deadline. Did we fall asleep before the end of the game? Were we updating our My Space page and forgot? Did we get sidetracked on HotChicksWithDouchebags.com and lost track of time?

And once again we have a prime example of editors asleep at the wheel. Is there anyone proofing anything anymore? Come on! A cursory glance at the page should have been able to catch this error. It was the first thing I noticed on the page!

Honestly, I do not know if Phil did the table or not, but someone at the Indianapolis Newspaper Monopoly really screwed the pooch on this one. And they wonder why their readership continues to decline.